The present invention relates generally to television and other viewable programming systems, and more particularly, to an apparatus and method that provides an In-Guide user interface for programmable blocking of viewable programs, such as for parental control of a television receiver.
A system has been proposed in the United States and endorsed by the U.S. Congress commonly known as the V-Chip System. The system involves using the vertical blanking interval (xe2x80x9cVBIxe2x80x9d) of a standard television signal to include a code which indicates one or more rating factors for the program then being aired. These rating factors can include ratings similar to those promulgated by the Motion Picture Association of America (e.g. G, PG, PG-13, R, NC-17) and numerical ratings of individual categories of program nature such as violence, language, nudity and sexual content. A consumer V-Chip television system would allow a consumer to program his or her television system to exclude programs according to their preferred levels of one or more of these rating criteria or alternatively could be programmed to permit only programs having certain levels of content according to these rating categories.
A problem with the V-Chip system, as recognized in an article by T. Atherton, entitled xe2x80x9cLiving With the V-Chip,xe2x80x9d The Ottawa Citizen, Entertainment, Section F, pp. F1-F2 (Saturday, Mar. 9, 1996), is that the perceived utility of the V-Chip system to a consumer depends on whether the consumer agrees with the subjective ratings contained in the VBI for most, if not all, programs. The author of this article, who purportedly has been involved in a xe2x80x9cBeta-testxe2x80x9d of the V-Chip system in Canada, gives two illustrative examples in his article. First, xe2x80x9ctrash-talkxe2x80x9d shows are rated at the lowest possible level for violence and the next lowest level for language and sex categories, even though these shows often contain verbal violence, physical confrontations and graphic verbal sexual discussions. Second, utilizing the overall rating system to exclude this type of program, such as excluding all programs with a rating above PG, results in the blocking out of many programs which the author considers appropriate for viewing and does not wish blocked out, such as the movie Forrest Gump. Although some people may disagree with the author""s judgment of the relative harm and worth of particular television programs, the article illustrates, at least, that regardless of how much the ratings providers will be able to adjust and fine tune their ratings system, based upon the majority of consumersxe2x80x2 wishes, there will remain a significant portion of the consumer public who will disagree with the rating systems and think that whatever exclusion programming they do will block out desirable programs while not blocking out undesirable programs. Accordingly, improvements on the V-Chip system are needed. One improvement to the V-Chip system is using apparatus and method as described in co-pending U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 60/076,290 filed on Feb. 27, 1998, titled V-Chip Plus: Parental Control Apparatus and Method, the disclosures of which are hereby incorporated by reference as if set forth in full herein.
For a number of years, television receivers have been equipped with picture-in-picture (PIP) capability. In PIP format, the moving, real time images of one television channel are displayed on the background of the screen and the moving, real time images of another television channel are displayed in a PIP window overlaid on a small area of the background. Because two channels are simultaneously displayed by the television receiver, two tuners are required. The viewer enters the PIP mode by pressing a PIP key on the viewer""s controller. Then, the viewer can change either the channel of the background or the channel of the PIP by resetting the appropriate tuner. To reverse the background and PIP images, the viewer simply presses a SWAP key. To collapse the PIP window, the viewer again presses the PIP key.
Television program guides help television viewers select programs to watch. Such television program guides list the available television programs by day of the week, time of day, channel, and program title (text-based television program guides). For many years, text-based television program guides have been published in hard copy form. More recently, as illustrated by Levine Pat. No. 4,908,713, text-based television program guides have begun to take an electronic form. In other words, the schedule of program listings is stored in an electronic memory connected to the television receiver. The program listings are recalled from memory by the viewer on command for display on the television screen. Without PIP technology, text-based television program guides overlay the real-time image of the program being received by the television tuner.
Despite the prevalence of text-based television program guides, many viewers prefer to make their program selections by switching the television tuner from channel to channel in order to observe on the screen the program being received on the respective channels. This process is sometimes called xe2x80x9cgrazing.xe2x80x9d
Emanuel Pat. No. 5,161,019 discloses an automated form of channel grazing. A preselected group of channels are sequentially scanned by switching, the tuner of the television receiver from channel to channel. A still image of the program received on each channel is stored in a memory. After all the channels have been scanned, the still images from all of the channels are simultaneously displayed on the television screen. This process gives the viewer more information about the program choices in addition to that obtainable from a textual television program guide, namely still images of the actual programs are displayed.
In one embodiment of the invention described in co-pending PCT Application PCT/US95/11173 for Method and Apparatus for Displaying Television Programs and Related Text, the disclosures of which are hereby incorporated by reference as if set forth in full herein, real-time images of a television program can be displayed in the PIP window. Simultaneously, a television viewer can use a PIP format for display of television program listings from a program schedule data base in the background. The viewer can select a particular program from the displayed current television program listing and cause the corresponding real-time program images to appear in the PIP window. In another embodiment of the invention described in co-pending PCT Application PCT/US95/11173, a television viewer can use a PIP format for display of future television program listings from a program schedule data base in the background and moving images of a video clip of one of the program listings in the background display selected for example by a cursor.
The present invention is directed to an apparatus and method that provides for a user interface for programmable blocking, such as for parental control, of viewable programs, such as programs that can be viewed on a television receiver. A memory provides storage of information relating to viewable programming and user defined blocking instructions. A microprocessor generates a blocking command as a function of the information stored in memory. A blocking circuit, such as a blocking circuit which passes a baseband television video signal to a television display, provides blocking of the video signal in response to the blocking command.